< Previous10 PERSPECTIVESVOLUME 46, NUMBER 3 Precision Kiosk Technologies Patrick McKinney General Manager 7320 Ohms Lane Edina, MN 55439 Phone: (612)940-8000 Performance-Based Standards Learning Institute Kim Godfrey Lovett Executive Director 350 Granite Street, Suite 1203 Braintree, MA 02184 Phone: (781)222-4788 Northpointe Chris Kamin, General Manager Equivant Office: (608) 416-4302 Mobile: (608) 577-1755 RemoteCOM Robert Rosenbusch, President/CEO 2251 Double Creek Dr. Suite 404 Round Rock, TX 78664 Phone: (512)848-0299 SCRAM Systems Erin White, Marketing Manager Scram Systems 1241 West Mineral Avenue Littleton, CO 80120 Phone: (303)483-0552 Securus Monitoring Katie Desir, Marketing Manager Securus Monitoring Solutions 5353 W Sam Houston Parkway N, Suite 190 Houston, TX 77041 Phone: 773.658.0028 Email: Sentinel Offender Services LLC David Scheppegrel, Senior Vice President Securus Monitoring Solutions 3330 Cumberland BLVD, Ste 700, Suite 190 Atlanta, GA 30339 Shadowtrack Robert L. Magaletta, President & CEO P.O. Box 1686, Covingtonm LA, 70434 Office: 985-867-3771 Smart Start, Inc. Annette Beard, Regional Sales Manager 500 East Dallas Road,Grapevine, TX 76051 Phone: (919) 604.2513 The Change Companies Jesse Tillotson, National Director of Justice Services 5221 Sigstrom Drive, Carson, NV 89706 Phone: (888)-889-8866 Track Group Miranda Follis, Director of Marketing 200 East 5th Avenue, Suite 100 Napierville, IL 60446 Phone: (877) 260.2010 Tyler Technologies Stevie Poole 5101 Tennyson Parkway Plano, TX 75024 Phone: (904) 654.3741 Uptrust Leo Scott, Program Manager 1 Sutter Street, Suite 350 San Francisco, CA 94104 765-469-1593 Website: Vant4ge Sean Hosman, CEO P.O. Box 802, Salt Lake City, UT 84110 Phone: (801)541-5212 appa associate members appa corporate members cont. appa associate members Magnusun & Menafree: TOO LITTLE, TOO MUCH, JUST RIGHT: CONSIDERING AN INDIVIDUAL’S INFORMATION CAPACITY AND EXPERIENCE SENSITIVITY AS A RESPONSIVITY FACTOR Introduction Probation agencies across the country use the Risk- Need-Responsivity framework to inform supervision conditions and practices. Yet, in practice, agencies focus on “risk” and “needs” and rarely consider “responsivity.” In fact, while it is a central tenet of the framework, responsivity is often treated as the framework’s third- wheel. Responsivity refers to uniquely responding to individuals as people who have complex needs and varied experiences and identities. When probation agencies are responsive to individuals on community supervision, they show that they recognize and consider the individual’s gender and sexual identity, trauma and mental health history, racial and cultural identity, and treatment and modality preferences when working with the person throughout the probation experience. By acknowledging the importance of these domains, probation officers (POs) affirm that these components are central to the identity of the individuals on their caseloads and will be taken into consideration as they work together. POs must take into account that individuals on probation likely have previous experiences with racism, sexism, cis-sexism, ableism, heterosexism, stigma, and other structural barriers. These experiences in various community settings (e.g., health care, work settings, DMV, public housing, treatment, shelters) will impact how motivated these individuals are to navigate probation, perceived as another institution where they may anticipate similar experiences. Infusing the concept 13 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION INFORMATION PROCESSING MATTERS of responsivity into probation practice means seeing people as complex individuals who are navigating a complex system and providing reassurance that they do not need to navigate it alone. When the PO and the person on probation build a plan to navigate probation together, they must consider several factors that make the person unique. This includes factors typically mentioned in the responsivity literature (e.g., individual’s gender and sexual identity, trauma and mental health, racial and cultural identity, and treatment and modality preferences). However, we suggest another responsivity factor is an individual’s information capacity and experience sensitivity. This term refers to how much information someone needs to feel prepared to navigate institutions, which in the context of probation means to meet probation conditions and complete probation successfully. This might include how someone prefers to receive the information and how much information they need to complete tasks. It also refers to acknowledging how previous negative experiences with bureaucratic systems might impact how much emotional support they need to navigate such a system again. This includes emotional fatigue from the consistent anxiety of navigating the legal system, including the experience of dealing with the system with little help while experiencing overt discrimination. Broadly, the responsivity concept of information capacity and experience sensitivity taps into various factors that may impact a person’s ability to accept, process, and use information to complete probation successfully. This paper will discuss three domains that POs must consider when responding to someone’s information capacity and experience sensitivity: (a) cognitive bandwidth; (b) level of preparedness, and (c) institutional cynicism. Understanding these domains will better equip POs to structure and format meetings as well as determine how best to provide the support that will enable individuals to successfully complete probation. Defining Information Capacity and Experience Sensitivity When probation agencies respond to an individual’s information capacity and experience sensitivity, it means they are considering how a person processes information and experiences (Rozendall et al., 2003). One’s lived experience, including socioeconomic background, exposure to trauma, mental health diagnoses and disability status, can greatly affect how people process information, because these experiences influence cognitive and social-emotional development (Brooks- Gunn & Duncan, 1997; Evan & Kim, 2013). Previous research has found that children who experienced chronic stressors (e.g., poverty, trauma) are significantly more likely to have cognitive and social-emotional deficits that persist into adulthood (Evans & Kim, 2013). This finding is especially important for individuals on probation, because they are disproportionately impacted by factors influencing cognitive and social-emotional development at an early age and throughout adulthood (Bradner, K. et al, 2020; Levenson et al., 2021). Therefore, assessing how individuals on probation process information is a critical step to centering them in their own probation experience and building an effective working relationship. Assessing how individuals process information requires evaluating three specific domains, as shown below in Figure 1. As mentioned earlier, these consist of cognitive bandwidth, level of preparedness, and institutional cynicism. Understanding these three domains helps to give insight about how much information to provide an individual about what they need to do to complete probation, the type of information to provide an individual to feel prepared to accomplish what they need to do to complete probation, and how much emotional support they need to complete probation. Figure 1. Defining Information Capacity and Experience Sensitivity The first domain considers an individual’s cognitive bandwidth, which refers to an individual’s planning, attention, and decision-making abilities (Mullainathan & Shafir, 2014). Scholars may also refer to this as “attentional resources” or “conscious processing resources.” An individual’s bandwidth can impact that individual’s ability to change behaviors and dictates the information load and format they need to make any changes at all. The size of a person’s cognitive bandwidth can vary based upon various precipitating factors, including factors that may be chronic (e.g., 14 PERSPECTIVESVOLUME 46, NUMBER 3 INFORMATION PROCESSING MATTERS poverty, trauma, disability) or situational stressors (e.g., financial stress, health problems). For example, if someone’s cognitive bandwidth is wide, they might be able to digest a lot of information during one session with their PO, while for those with narrower bandwidths the same amount of information might both overwhelm and confuse them. Individuals with narrow cognitive bandwidths may need to have information-sharing spread out over several PO contact visits, known in other legal settings as “slow engagement” (Myers et al., 2022). Slow engagement or micro-engagements include “gradual, gentle, and persistent micro-interactions” with the goal of nudging individuals towards stability using a format they can handle, building rapport and alleviating concerns based on previous legal system experiences (Myers et al., 2022, p.2). The second domain pertains to an individual’s level of preparedness and refers to the amount of information someone needs in order to feel prepared to act or navigate complex processes. For example, some individuals on probation may need very little information to feel prepared to apply for a job or complete onerous housing paperwork. Other individuals may need a great deal of information to feel prepared to do the same tasks. Level of preparedness may also incorporate more nuanced concepts of individuals’ uncertainty, fear, personal agency, competence, and confidence. POs should assess the amount of information individuals on probation need to complete tasks and navigate social systems on their own. The third domain is institutional cynicism, which captures how past experiences with social systems and institutions impact an individual’s level of trust in those institutions (Tyler & Huo, 2002). Institutional cynicism is important to consider because it can greatly affect a person’s willingness to engage with institutions due to sense of vulnerability and lack of trust. For people on probation, navigating affordable housing, receiving food subsidies, securing employment and health insurance, and participating in programming are all pertinent examples of institutional contexts where legal cynicism can matter. An individual’s personal experiences and vicarious experiences (based on what has happened to, say, family members or peers) with these systems are important determinants of their beliefs (Brunson, 2010; Desmon et al., 2016; Williamson, 2021). When individuals have past negative experiences navigating bureaucratic institutions, either directly or vicariously, this can contribute to greater institutional cynicism. Moreover, prior stigmatizing or discriminatory experiences can further contribute to institutional cynicism. The effect of such negative encounters, some of which tend to recur, will compound over time (Small and Pager 2020, p. 61). How individuals process these experiences matters for the experiential sensitivity they carry with them into their current probation sentence. POs who understand individuals’ past experiences navigating these institutions will be better equipped to validate the frustration of these past events, provide emotional support to allay concerns, and more effectively tailor strategies to help an individual avoid past barriers. Applying Information Capacity and Experience Sensitivity in Practice Responding to an individual’s information capacity and experience sensitivity requires measuring each of these three domains and then using this information to inform the frequency, format, and content of probation meetings. Figure 2 below offers how to use these concepts to structure meetings within probation settings. When measuring cognitive bandwidth, individuals can range from “processing very little information at a time” to “processing a lot of information at a time.” This spectrum can inform the number of probation meetings and how much information the PO should provide during each meeting. Specifically, an individual who processes very little information at a time may need many meetings, being provided a limited amount of information during each separate encounter. In contrast, an individual with a higher level of cognitive bandwidth may require one meeting and receive all the same information at a time. Thus, POs must acknowledge that the amount of information an individual can receive in any one meeting may change from meeting to meeting. Importantly, this changing dynamic is not an indictment of an individual’s commitment to their probation process, but rather a reflection of what they can handle in the moment. Therefore, adhering to strict contact standards policies that prescribe a set number of contacts for individuals on probation lacks responsivity to an individual’s cognitive bandwidth. Agency policies that affirm individuals as complex people with complex situations will provide considerable flexibility to POs with regard to how they structure the frequency of meetings.15 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION INFORMATION PROCESSING MATTERS Figure 2. Applying Information Capacity and Experience Sensitivity The level of preparedness an individual needs can range from “a lot of information to feel prepared” to “minimal information to feel prepared.” When individuals need a lot of information to feel prepared to accomplish a task or navigate a process, this will require POs to provide, in both written and spoken form, incredibly detailed instructions. It may also prove useful to include guided visualizations or practice examples to increase an individual’s perceived competence and confidence. Maximizing this approach requires POs to acknowledge that even simple tasks are not simple for everyone. The ease with which a PO personally navigates highly bureaucratic agencies is not necessarily the experience of others and should certainly not be taken for granted for individuals on probation – regardless of that their frequency on probation. When the content of contacts responds more effectively to what people need in order to act or navigate a process, this can enhance motivation and personal agency. Lastly, when measuring institutional cynicism, individuals can range from “high institutional cynicism or no trust in institutions” to “low institutional cynicism or a lot of trust in institutions.” An individual who reports a significant amount of trust in institutions may feel emotionally prepared to navigate tasks or processes independently. However, when an individual reports “no” or “nearly no” trust in institutions, to be responsive the PO will be need to acknowledge the frustrations and barriers individuals previously experienced. POs will also need to ask the individuals on probation how much guidance or support they feel they need to handle the process—and the question regarding such guidance and support needs should be considered as distinctly different from how much information an individual needs to feel confident to navigate the process. Specifically, this may include filling out paperwork together, going to an event together, and actively assisting with barriers for individuals (e.g., transportation, calling treatment centers or other bureaucratic agencies on their behalf). Maximizing this approach requires POs to understand and believe that individuals, while attempting to navigate these processes/ systems previously, experienced racism, sexism or cis- sexism, ablism, homophobia, and/or stigma and that these experiences have shaped how motivated the individual is to navigate the process Importantly, any decrease in motivation must not come with judgement, but rather with empathy, acknowledgment, and validation of these experiences. Taking into consideration and responding to a client’s level of institutional cynicism simply means the PO needs to give credence to individuals and their experiences, acknowledging that such experiences will likely happen again, and assuring such individuals that they do not have to do it alone. Conclusion As probation agencies move toward coaching models (Lovins et al., 2018), many agencies are reconsidering the use of risk scores to drive contact standards. However, agencies have often been amiss in how they inform the structure (both format and frequency) of probation meetings. Awareness of information capacity and experience sensitivity can provide very helpful guidance in this regard. As discussed in this paper, opening our eyes to this responsivity factor and the importance of cognitive bandwidth, level of preparedness, and institutional cynicism is key. When probation agencies measure these domains, POs can more appropriately structure the frequency, format, and content of probation contacts to provide the support that will enable individuals to successfully complete probation. Responding to individuals’ information capacity and experience sensitivity, along with other personal identity factors, elevates “responsivity” from being the framework’s third-wheel to its rightful place as a central tenet of the RNR model. As agencies increase their own capacities to thoughtfully consider responsivity, the tenet may likely become the most important feature in the framework because it most directly centers individuals as complex people in their own probation process. 16 PERSPECTIVESVOLUME 46, NUMBER 3 INFORMATION PROCESSING MATTERS References Bradner, K., Schiraldi, V., Mejia, N. & Lopoo, E. (2020). More work to do: Analysis of Probation and Parole in the United States, 2017-2018. New York, NY: Columbia Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne and Greg J. Duncan. 1997. The effects of poverty on children. The Future of Children 7(2):55-71. Desmond, Matthew, Andrew V. Papachristos and David S. Kirk. 2016. Police violence and citizen crime reporting in the black community. American Sociological Review 81(5)857-876. Evans, Gary W., and Pilyoung Kim. 2013. Childhood poverty, chronic stress, self-regulation, and coping. Child Development Perspectives 7(1):43-48. Gau, J. & Brunson, R. (2010). Procedural justice and order maintenance policing: A study of inner-city young men’s perceptions of police legitimacy. Justice Quaterly, 27(2), 255-279. Levenson, J.S., Prescott, D.S., Willis, G.M. (2022). Trauma-informed treatment practices in criminal justice settings. In: Jeglic, E., Calkins, C. (eds) Handbook of Issues in Criminal Justice Reform in the United States. Myers, N., Hutnyan, M., Wright, G., Lee, G., Woodward, P., Wilkey, J., Young, W. & Bromley, E. (2022) Lessons in “slow” engagement from staff and administrators at a prebooking jail diversion program. Psychiatric Services. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ps.202100317. Lovins, B. K., Cullen, F. T., Latessa, E. J., & Jonson, C. (2018) Probation officer as a coach: Building a new professional identity. Federal Probation. 82(1), 13-18. Mullainathan, Sendhil and Eldar Shafir. 2014. “Freeing up intelligence: A preoccupation with scarcity diminishes IQ and self-control. Simple measures can help us counteract this cognitive tax.” Scientific American Mind, January/ February 58-63. Rozendaal, J.S., A. Minnaert and M. Boekaerts. 2003. “Motivation and self-regulated learning in secondary vocational education: information-processing type and gender differences.” Learning and Individual Differences. Small, Mario L., and Devah Pager. 2020. “Sociological Perspectives on Racial Discrimination.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 34(2):49-67. Tyler, R. Tom and Yuen J. Huo. 2002. Trust in the Law: Encouraging Cooperation with the Police and Courts. NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Williamson, L. D. (2021). Beyond personal experiences: examining mediated vicarious experiences as an antecedent of medical mistrust. Health Communication, 1-14. Author Bios: Shannon Magnuson, PhD, is a Senior Associate with Justice System Partners (JSP). She earned her Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Society from George Mason University. Shannon helps legal system agencies challenge their status quo by co-investigating their local settings, analyzing and unpacking their data, and use this evidence to co-build with stakeholders more equitable solutions. Her publications include articles on legal system change/reform efforts, process evaluations, prison and probation reform, PREA, and risk assessments. Michael Menefee, PhD, is a Research Associate at Justice System Partners (JSP). He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the effects of jail incarceration, probation supervision, and trauma among justice- involved populations. His publications include articles on the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities within bail systems and pretrial detention; the effects of jail incarceration on future criminal legal system involvement and labor market outcomes, and; educational disparities among justice-involved populations. Kimberly Gentry Sperber, Ph.D., Talbert House Center for Health and Human Services Research Sperber: CONSIDERING THE ROLE OF TRAUMA IN CORRECTIONAL RESPONSIVITY AND OUTCOMES19 AMERICAN PROBATION AND PAROLE ASSOCIATION INFORMATION PROCESSING MATTERS CONSIDERING THE ROLE OF TRAUMA IN CORRECTIONAL RESPONSIVITY AND OUTCOMES Trauma Matters in Correctional Interventions The Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model is the foundation of evidence-based correctional treatment and supervision for many correctional agencies. This model presents a framework for assessing and triaging supervision and treatment based on an individual’s risk of reoffending while using cognitive behavioral and social learning approaches to target those individual needs for change that are most closely associated with criminal behavior. Taken together, these approaches are reflective of the risk principle, the need principle, and the general responsivity principle (i.e., use of behavior change approaches that work best for justice-involved individuals in the aggregate). To maximize effectiveness, however, the model also posits that correctional agencies should match interventions to each individual’s circumstances and personal attributes, known as specific responsivity (Ward et al., 2007). The list of characteristics and attributes that may serve as specific responsivity factors is long and varied in complexity, often presenting a challenge to correctional agencies in the choice of responsivity factors to integration in their supervision and intervention models. There is a continually growing body of empirical evidence, however, that supports the premise that tailoring criminal justice responses to address the impact of trauma for justice-involved individuals is warranted to create a more effective and humane approach to recidivism reduction. This evidence demonstrates the disproportionate prevalence of trauma exposure among justice-involved individuals (Gibson, 2011), the interconnected relationships between trauma and criminogenic risk factors (Fritzon et al., 2020), and the impact of traumatic stress on treatment and supervision engagement and outcomes (Jaycox et al., 2004). To assess the impact of trauma on correctional operations and outcomes, one must first understand what trauma is and how it impacts survivors. Trauma results from experiences, events, or circumstances that cause intense physical and psychological stress reactions in individuals. Trauma can “result from a single event, multiple events, or a set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically and emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s physical, social, emotional, or spiritual wellbeing” (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 2014a, p.7). Examples of traumatic events include, but are not limited to, physical and sexual assault, childhood neglect, natural disasters, major accidents, deaths of loved ones, and witnessed violence. Some traumatic events overwhelm the human neurobiological stress response and can result in long- term adverse outcomes such as emotional dysregulation, hypervigilance, disassociation, flashbacks, altered cognition, self-injurious behavior, substance use/abuse, and physical health complaints, among other symptoms (SAMHSA, 2014b). Prevalence of Trauma Both justice-involved youth and adults are more likely to have victimization histories compared to the general population and are more likely to experience the entire range of less serious traumatic life event stressors to the most serious traumatic events (Gibson, 2011). While prevalence rates vary by study, research has shown estimates of up to 78% of justice-involved youth experience childhood maltreatment (Miller et al., 2011) and upwards of 95% experience childhood adversity (Wilson et al., 2013). These rates are significantly higher than rates for youth in the general population (Dierkhising et al., 2013), and rates for justice-involved girls are especially elevated at two to three times the rates for justice-involved boys (Coleman & Stewart, 2010; Foy et al., 2012; Moore et al., 2013). Similarly, both justice- involved men and women report significantly higher rates of physical and sexual abuse than the general population, although the justice-involved women and girls report significantly higher rates of both past physical and sexual abuse than justice-involved men and boys (Wanamaker et al., 2021, as cited in Covington, 2022). Finally, justice-involved men are more likely to have experienced childhood abuse, while justice-involved women are more likely to experience both childhood and adult abuse (Komarovskaya et al., 2011).Next >